Machine learning couldn’t be hotter, with several heavy hitters offering platforms aimed at seasoned data scientists and newcomers interested in working with neural networks. Among the more popular options is TensorFlow, a machine learning library that Google open-sourced in November 2015.

In my January 2018 review of TensorFlow r1.5, I discussed how the library has become more mature, implemented more algorithms and deployment options, and become easier to program over the preceding year. The best deep learning library had become even better.

In this article, I’ll give you a very quick gloss on machine learning, introduce you to the basics of TensorFlow, walk you through a few TensorFlow models in the area of image classification, and show you the new high-level APIs. Then I’ll point you to additional resources for learning and using TensorFlow.